


my favorite word is you

by Hectopascal



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Other, dumb worldbuilding, i regret all my decisions, it's either a romance or a horror story depending on where you're standing, the outsider doesn't do love like most people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:02:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hectopascal/pseuds/Hectopascal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where the Outsider was always watching and Corvo was always chosen.</p><p>(He is beloved, the soothsayer cries when the boy who will become Corvo Attano is born. By the ocean and the air and the devil itself.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	my favorite word is you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes a miracle to force Corvo Attano into being. Or a disaster, depending on your perspective.

Far, far out in the open ocean, in waters that are unknown to the current civilized world and more deadly than the dread lands of Pandyssia, there is a place where storms do not rage and where pods of whales swim fathoms deep, forever untouched by humanity's various cruelties.

It has been proven by natural philosophers that whale song travels for miles underwater and conjectured that the sound serves as a primitive form of communication between individual whales.

Here is what has not been proven and will never be so much as hinted at in the wildest fever dreams of any human of any station at any point in time.

The place where the oldest and largest of the leviathans dwells lies past the point where the hardiest of normal whale cannot survive.

Far, far below that special place, fathoms beyond fathoms beyond fathoms down, there is a crevice that stretches for a thousand miles wide and triple as deep. No life form has evolved to function at the bottom of the great and yawning abyss. The water there is pitch black, void of microscopic luminescent bacteria and magma vents, and colder than any ice cap on the surface.

This is not where the leviathan lives, no. Look again, more carefully. This _is_ the leviathan, the great and yawning abyss itself.

What could be mistaken for the sea floor is actually only part of the leviathan's back. See the dorsal ridge, that chain of underwater mountains hundreds of miles long. The scale is impossible to comprehend; surely a creature of such enormous size cannot exist? But it does. One of its flippers could hold every continent in the world with room to spare. Somewhere, there are two great black eyes that have been involved with the process of blinking once over the past millennium. Somewhere, there is a mouth filled with a million sharp conical teeth, each bigger than the average human house. Somewhere, there is a heart the size of the greatest city ever built beating... so... very... s l o w l y.

It exists. It has always existed. And right now, at this very moment, it is doing something extremely rare.

The leviathan, the great and yawning abyss, is moving. Not very much, in the grand scale of things. An inch, perhaps two, no more than three definitely. And yet, billions of tons of water is displaced as a result and it has to go _somewhere_.

.

.

Animals are, in general, cleverer than most humans. It's a fact. They have smaller brains but a greater proportion is geared toward survival and beasts are quite good at heeding instincts that scream at them for no apparent reason.

They know they need to run so they do. The ones that can, live on to pass down that wisdom. The ones that can't, well. It's really hit or miss as to whether they see the day out, let alone last long enough to procreate.

Human beings happen to be an unfortunate member of the latter camp.

.

.

Sunset over the south coast of Serkonos looks like this: the water awash with color, warmer in the evening than it is during the day this time of year, fishermen returning with their haul, smiling up at the lucky red sky.

The following day dawns sunny and clear. The smart animals, the ones that are capable, are already running. People go out about their business, happy and blind in their ignorance.

Still far away but speeding up all the time, a ripple of water is moving. There is _so much of it_.

.

.

It's hot in the Month of Rain and it shows in the crowds who flock to the beach.

(Birds are the cleverest of beasts. They are all long gone.)

The Day of Relaxation is meant to be nothing of the sort; a break from normal work for those who can afford it spent striving for spiritual cleanliness by fasting and personal contemplation of the Scriptures. It's not taken very seriously in the area. Or... anywhere.

The first inch vanishes without notice. So does the next. And the next one after that. The waves lapping against the sand are a bit smaller, that's all, and they don't manage to splash quite so much. Children still run laughing into the surf under the watchful eye of a nearby relative. Teenagers playing further out feel a slight tug, but dismiss it as the pulling current. It is not a danger they are unfamiliar with or incapable of handling.

A foot goes. Then two. Damp sand starts to dry in the sun. A few strands of seaweed wash up but not away. 

The ocean recedes. The young chase it, unthinking. The older ones bob further away from the shore and can't tell because the water level around them isn't dropping.

An elderly woman notices first. Her hearing is starting to fade but her eyes are still sharp enough and her second grandmother lived through the last great wave and told all her many children and grandchildren how to watch for the signs. As a girl, she swore never to forget and she hasn't.

The old woman jumps to her feet with the vigor of one half her age and she roars with the booming voice of one who will be heard and obeyed _immediately_.

To their credit, everyone in range listens, gathers their family as quick as they can and runs for high ground, shouting warnings to the uninformed as they go.

It is, of course, not nearly good enough.

In the distance, there is a faint sound, rumbling like thunder, but the sky is still clear. The horizon is smooth and the sea looks calm. That is going to change.

Fact: the Serkonan language has more than one word for 'great'. The one used in context of the great wave means, all at once, 'beautiful' and 'terrible' and 'inescapable'.

.

.

There is a young woman running for her life. Beside her is a young man, also running for his life. He falls. She helps him up. Their hands clutch tightly as they keep going.

.

.

There is a young woman running for her life. She lost her family in the panicked crowd and is terrified by the crush of bodies, by the talk of what's coming. She's crying. A young man catches her arm and pulls her out of the river of people, presses his hands to her shoulders and tells her, _just breathe, okay, keep breathing, it'll be alright_.

She wants to believe him.

.

.

There is a young woman running for her life. She's more determined than afraid. She slows to help an old man, to pick up a toddler and give him back to his brother, to yell at wide-eyed street brats to get the fuck out of the alleys if they don't want to die.

There is a young man, shaking with his fear, who tries to drag her forward when she's not ready to go yet. He screams, _cmon or you'll die, we'll all die, cmon let's just go!_

She screams back, _help me help them you bastard you coward the sooner they move the sooner I'll go, so help!_

.

.

There is a young woman running for her life. She sees a young man stumble but doesn't stop to find out if he's okay. She wants to live and find her siblings and her specific young man and everything else is nothing but a distraction.

.

.

It's a large city. There are many such young women and men running for their lives. Technically, just one pair is important and only tangentially. It's not even the man or the woman; it's their desperate union that happens in the night, there and then exactly.

Hundreds will die in the flooding, hundreds more of starvation in the months to come, but. But, many sparks of life were lit as people came together, frantic for comfort and warmth and proof that they were still alive.

The date will go down in history as a great (here meaning: large, momentous, horrible) tragedy.

Only one will know it as the day the boy who will become Corvo Attano was conceived, and that is the being who caused it to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Red skies at night, sailors' delight._  
>  _Red skies at morning, sailors take warning."_  
>     
>    
> – Ancient Mariners Rhyme


End file.
